245. Casino Royale

• Year of release: 2006
• Director: Martin Campbell
• Genre: Action
• IMDB Page

007 is cool. C007.

Lame jokes aside, this movie has got it all: action, babes, one-liners and poker. It's James Bond in a casino, but does the movie play its cards right?

The story is good enough to watch the movie. Bond tracks down, or wants to, the man who funds terrorists. To get to this man, Mr. Le Chiffre, he has to enter a poker tournament in Montenegro. Sure enough he wins it and afterwards he gets kidnapped and tortured by Le Chiffre. He gets saved and then there is some plot twisting and bending to keep you entertained.

One of the things bothering me about this movie is the final poker scene. As each player shows his hand he gets the advantage over the already shown hands. Sure enough Mr. Bond is last to show his hand, right after Mr. Le Chiffre showed the other players how you win at poker, and Mr. Bond obviously has yet another better hand. It feels all too artificial and coincidental to happen in real life, but good hands are dealt at 100/hour in the James Bond universe.

[insert (not-so-)funny remark]

The love scenes were also a bit unnecessary. And I'm not talking about Bond's usual smooth talking, but the actual love interest in Ms. Lynd. The part after Bond completed his mission and spends his days recovering and sailing around the world are very much irritating and annoying. Sure, we get the point. Bond and Lynd are in love. But I feel that by overemphasizing this relationship, the plot twist that follows it became all that more obvious and predictable. And we all know you don't play trump cards when others expect it.

But enough about the bad parts. This is an action movie so let's talk action.

The movie opens with a spectacular chase scene on foot. Bond chases a guy and the chased guy knows... wait for it... parcours. If you're unknown with this sport: it's basically overcoming obstacles on foot. There are some pretty awesome movies on youtube. Anyway, the dude knows what he's doing and clears some pretty dangerous obstacles.

In general the action scenes are executed nicely. It's a Bond movie after all, they've got the budget to pull this off.

I remember there being a lot of commotion of Daniel Craig being the new James Bond, because of his hair color. Exaggerated reactions. Daniel Craig did a good job and I don't think Bond's hair color matters at all.

Perhaps one final minor "bad thing". Eva Green, the Bond Girl in this movie, isn't that spectacular. But you know, tastes differ I guess.

Despite the annoying parts:

Buy It